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Sound System Engineering
Sound System Engineering
Fourth Edition

Don Davis
Eugene Patronis, Jr.
Pat Brown
Edited by
Glen Ballou
First published 1975
by Howard W. Sams & Co., Inc.
Indianapolis, Indiana 46268

This edition published 2013

by Focal Press
70 Blanchard Road, Suite 402, Burlington, MA 01803

Simultaneously published in the UK

by Focal Press
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Focal Press is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2013 Don Davis, Eugene Patronis, Jr. and Pat Brown

The right of Don Davis, Eugene Patronis, Jr. and Pat Brown to be identified as the authors of
this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form
or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publishers.

Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and
experience broaden our understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices,
or medical treatment may become necessary.

Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in
evaluating and using any information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein.
In using such information or methods they should be mindful of their own safety and the
safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional responsibility.

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only
for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

CIP data has been applied for

ISBN: 978-0-240-81846-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-240-81847-4 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman and Optimum

by Glen Ballou
The fourth edition of Sound System Engineering is dedicated to

Carolyn Davis
who is the catalyst that made it happen
and is the glue that held it all together.
 Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xv
Chapter 1 Why Sound System Engineering? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Basic Electrical Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Hearing Versus Listening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Craftsmanship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Rigging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
The Art, Philosophy, and Science of Sound. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4
Chapter 2 Voices Out of the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Significant Figures in the History of Audio and Acoustics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
1893—The Magic Year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Bell Laboratories and Western Electric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .11
Harvey Fletcher (1884–1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Harry Nyquist (1889–1976) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
The dB, dBm, and the VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12
Sound System Equalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Acoustic Measurements—Richard C. Heyser (1931–1987) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Calculators and Computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
The Meaning of Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Historical Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .14
Chapter 3 Sound and Our Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
The Human Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
The Current Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Unexpected Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
Chapter 4 Psychoacoustics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
Motivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Sound Reproduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Is it Better to be Born Blind or Deaf ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Recording Sound at the Eardrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Psychoacoustics via a Metaphysical Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .27
Barks, Bands, Equivalent Rectangular Bandwidths (ERBs), Phons and Sones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
Chapter 5 Digital Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33
Shannon’s Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
Dynamic Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .36
The Steps from Art to Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40
Moravec’s Warning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41
Digital Nomenclature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
What Is a Bit of Data? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
Bayesian Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
Planck System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47
Bits, Nats, and Bans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48
A Communication System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48
Holography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .49
Chapter 6 Mathematics for Audio Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
Engineering Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .53
Precision, Accuracy, and Resolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54
Simple Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54
How to Add Gains and Losses Algebraically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .54
The Factor-Label System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .55
vii
viii Contents

Basic Physical Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58

Mathematical Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60
Complex Number Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64
Decade Calibration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65
Converting Linear Scales to Logarithmic Scales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66
Finding the Renard Series for Fractional Octave Spacing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66
Radians and Steradians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67
Calculating Percentages and Ratios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
Useful Math Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72
Angles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75
A Little Trigonometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75
The Origin of the Base of the Natural Logarithm, e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76
The Complex Plane . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
Euler’s Theorem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78
Phasors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79
Rates of Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80
Chapter 7 Using the Decibel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85
The Decibel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87
The Neper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87
Concepts Underlying the Decibel and Its Use in Sound Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88
Measuring Electrical Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .90
Levels in dB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .91
The Decibel in Acoustics—LP, LW, and LI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92
Acoustic Intensity Level (LI), Acoustic Power Level (LW), and Acoustic Pressure Level (LP) . . . . . . . . .93
Inverse Square Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93
Directivity Factor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94
Ohm’s Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .94
A Decibel Is a Decibel Is a Decibel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .95
The Equivalent Level (LEQ) in Noise Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .96
Combining Decibels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97
Combining Voltage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99
Using the Log Charts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .99
Finding the Logarithm of a Number to Any Base . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100
Semitone Intervals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101
System Gain Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101
The VU and the VI Instrument . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101
Calculating the Number of Decades in a Frequency Span . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .104
Deflection of the Eardrum at Various Sound Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105
The Phon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105
The Tempered Scale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106
Measuring Distortion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106
The Acoustical Meaning of Harmonic Distortion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .106
Playback Systems in Studios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108
Decibels and Percentages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .109
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110
Chapter 8 Interfacing Electrical and Acoustic Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Alternating Current Circuits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113
Impedance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115
Electric Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117
Properties of the LCR Circuit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .120
Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121
Impedance Bridge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .126
 Contents ix

Constant Resistance Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .128

Impedance Properties of Moving Coil Loudspeakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .129
Network Theorems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .132
The Technician’s Viewpoint . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135
Impedance Defined . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .135
Handling the Acoustic Input and Output of the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .137
Total Electrical Gain of a System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .142
Interfacing the Electrical Output Power to the Acoustic Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .143
Gain Structure Revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .150
Chapter 9 Loudspeaker Directivity and Coverage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .151
Essential Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .153
Describing Q More Accurately . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158
Relationship Between C∠ and Q in an Idealized Case . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .159
Idealized Loudspeaker Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .160
Class D Audio Amplifiers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .165
Sound as a Weapon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166
An Older View of Q . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .166
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .167
Chapter 10 The Acoustic Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .169
The Acoustic Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171
Dispersion and Diffusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .171
Inverse Square Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172
Atmospheric Absorption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .172
Velocity of Sound . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .173
Isothermal vs. Adiabatic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .173
Temperature-Dependent Velocity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .174
The Effect of Altitude on the Velocity of Sound in Air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175
Typical Wavelengths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175
Doppler Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .175
Reflection and Refraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .176
Effect of a Space Heater on Flutter Echo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .177
Absorption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .177
Definitions in Acoustics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .178
Classifying Sound Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .178
The Acoustic Environment Indoors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .186
Chapter 11 Audio and Acoustic Measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189
Acoustic Analysis Sans Instrumentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191
Initial Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191
Acoustic Tests of Sound Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .192
Examining AC Outlets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .193
The ETC Plot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .195
Site Surveys and Noise Criteria Curves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203
An Improper Use of Real Time Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .203
Evaluation of Listener Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .205
Fractional Bandwidth Filter Analyzers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .206
Measuring Electromagnetic Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .209
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .211
Chapter 12 Large Room Acoustics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .213
What Is a Large Room? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .215
Levels Defined: Sound Power Level (LW), Sound Intensity Level (LI), and Sound Pressure Level (LP) 220
x Contents

Levels in Enclosed Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .221

Differentiating Between Reverberant Level and Reverberation Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .224
Evaluation of Signal-to-Noise Ratio, SNR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .225
Analyzing Reflections and Their Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .226
Critical Distance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .228
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .233
Chapter 13 Small Room Acoustics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .235
Non-Statistical Spaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .237
Small Room Acoustical Parameters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .238
Small Room Reverberation Times . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .238
Small Room Resonances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239
Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239
What Is an Eigen Mode? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .239
Small Room Geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .240
The Initial Signal Delay Gap (ISD) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .240
Reflections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .242
Reflection Free Zone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .244
Diffusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .245
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .248
Chapter 14 Designing for Acoustic Gain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .251
Maximum Physical Distance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .253
Establishing an Acceptable Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .253
Establishing an EAD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .254
Needed Acoustic Gain (NAG) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .254
The Number of Open Microphones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .255
The Feedback Stability Margin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .255
Calculating Potential Acoustic Gain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .256
Obtaining ΔDx Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .258
Measuring Acoustic Gain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .259
Achieving Potential Acoustic Gain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .259
Limiting Parameters in Sound Reinforcement System Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .260
How Much Electrical Power Is Required? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .260
Finding the Required Electrical Power (REP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .261
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .263
Chapter 15 Designing for Speech Intelligibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .265
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .267
Articulation Losses of Consonants in Speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .268
Maxfield’s Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .270
Speech Power and Articulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .270
Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .271
Speech Intelligibility Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .271
Non-Acoustic Articulation Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .275
Relationship Between QMIN and D2(MAX) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .276
High Density Overhead Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .276
%ALCONS Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .277
A Little History—Intelligibility Workshop 1986 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .278
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .279
Chapter 16 What is Waving and Why . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .281
General Properties of Air . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .283
Plane Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .288
Non-Planar Wave Motion in a Tube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .297
Plane Wave Tubes having Arbitrary Terminations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .299
 Contents xi

Impedance Tube . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .303

More General Waves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .305
Acoustic Intensity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .308
Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .309
Acoustic Dipole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .310
Chapter 17 Microphones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .313
The Microphone as the System Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .315
Microphone Sensitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .315
Thermal Noise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .317
Microphone Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .324
Nature of Response and Directional Characteristics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .325
Boundary Microphones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .330
Wireless Microphones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .335
Microphone Connectors, Cables, and Phantom Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .339
Measurement Microphones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .341
Microphone Calibrator . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .342
Chapter 18 Loudspeakers and Loudspeaker Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .345
Loudspeaker Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .347
Radiated Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .358
Axial Sound Pressure Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .363
Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .363
Loudspeaker Electrical Impedance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .364
Loudspeaker Directivity Factor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .365
Loudspeaker Sensitivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .365
Direct Radiator Example Calculations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .366
Horns and Compression Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .368
Practical Considerations Involving Horns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .374
Horn Compression Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .376
Crossover Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .378
Loudspeaker Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .392
Bessel Array . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .398
Line Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .400
Vented Enclosure Bass Loudspeakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .412
Large Signal Behavior of Loudspeakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .420
Chapter 19 Power Ratings for Amplifiers and Loudspeakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .423
Loudspeaker Power Ratings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .425
Active Loudspeaker Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .428
Non-Linear Operation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .428
The Amplifier as a Voltage Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .429
The Equivalent Amplifier Size–EAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .430
Power from a Voltage Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .431
Burst Testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .433
Power Rating Possibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .434
Putting It All Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .435
Multi-way Loudspeakers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .438
System Gain Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .439
Combining MIV and EAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .439
Chapter 20 Computer-Aided System Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .441
Spherical Loudspeaker Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .443
Near Field vs. Far Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .444
The Measurement Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .445
Loudspeaker Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .447
xii Contents

Direct Field Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .449

Room Model Detail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .449
Room Acoustics—An Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .451
Absorption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .453
Realistic Room Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .457
Universal Room Modeling Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .460
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .461
Chapter 21 Signal Delay and Signal Synchronization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .463
Signal Delay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .465
Useful Signal Delay Equations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .466
Synchronization and Alignment of Arrays . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .469
Finding Acoustic Origins of Unlike Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .470
Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .472
Chapter 22 Signal Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .475
Spectra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .477
Analog to Digital Conversion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .497
System Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .502
Digital Systems and the Z Transform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .520
Dynamics Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .528
Chapter 23 Digital Audio Formats and Transports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .533
The Analog Waveform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .535
Quantization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .535
Digital Signal Processing—DSP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .542
Two Data Camps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .543
How Does Ethernet Work? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .545
Ethernet Protocols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .546
An Open Standard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .549
AES3 vs. AoE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .549
Hybrid and Proprietary Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .549
Analog vs. Digital Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .550
Chapter 24 Sound System Equalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .553
System Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .555
Early Research on Equalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .555
The Transient Nature of Acoustic Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .556
Introduction of Real-Time Analyzers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .559
Band-Rejection, Bandpass, and Band-Boost Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .562
TEF Analysis in Equalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .567
How to Approach Equalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .568
What Can an Equalizer Equalize? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .570
A Real-Time Regenerative-Response Method of Equalizing a Sound System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .572
Equalizing for Playback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .573
An Improper Use of Real Time Analysis in Monitoring Music and Speech . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .574
Diaphragmatic Absorbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .574
Don’t Equalize for Hearing Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .575
Proximity Modes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .575
Checking Microphone Polarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .575
Loudspeaker Polarity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .576
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .576
Chapter 25 Putting It All Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .577
Acoustical Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .579
Alternative Solutions for a Given Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .579
Device Interconnections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .582
 Analog Interconnection Circuitry Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .583
Signal Cables—Analog Audio, Digital Audio, and Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .590
AES3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .597
Computer Control and Communication of Digital Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .602
Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .605
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .609
 Preface
There are two worlds in audio—one of wave equations, Fourier, Hilbert, and Laplace transforms, and the other
of Ohm’s Law, Sabine and Hopkins Stryker. Eugene Patronis, Jr., straddles both like a colossus, as he is able to
theorize in Quantum Mechanics and design, build, and service, with his own hands, all components used in
audio.
Pat Brown is our new co-author and brings to this volume unique tools he has developed in the course of
his loudspeaker testing, particularly directivity measurements, into the twenty-first century. He has taught
Syn-Aud-Con seminars all over the world in person as well as through his internet training programs. He is a
longtime friend of both Dr. Patronis and Don Davis, and like them, a man who delights in fully sharing his
knowledge of sound system engineering with others. We welcome his participation in this volume.
The authors come from two quite different backgrounds: one is academic, the others are industrial and field
oriented. “The lion is known by his claw” was said of Newton, whereas the technician approach uses a broad
brush to get a workable, if not elegant, answer. Therefore, we have identified each author’s contribution sepa-
rately. It’s your privilege to select the approach most applicable to your need. With today’s generation of com-
puter users and the wealth of available software it’s you, the reader, who chooses the boundaries of your
interests and academic skills. It is our wish that whatever background you bring to the subject you will find
new tools for that level and hints of the next.
Sound System Engineering is a widely sold, widely used text on sound system design. The first editions
were oriented toward those planning systems from components available in the existing marketplace, i.e., they
were treated as boxes on a diagram. The first editions ignored component design and analysis other than their
interconnecting parameters.
When Don and Carolyn Davis, the authors of the first two editions, sought specific advice on component
design and in-depth analysis of given components they turned to their long time friend and mentor, Eugene
Patronis, Jr. to provide the in-depth analysis he excels in. You will find in this edition both approaches, allow-
ing newcomers to operate efficiently while providing the more experienced an opportunity to achieve a more
advanced viewpoint. We know that one can start reading on one level, but as our experience and expertise
develops, we are grateful for the more advanced approach. What we read as our learning process starts is much
different years later and we become very grateful for the more advanced material.
Those who have benefited from a rigorous and thorough academic background will find that Eugene
Patronis’ work is a succinct summary of all you should have absorbed intellectually whereas the less sophisti-
cated approach may contain useful nuggets that have surmounted “gray” areas in system compromises. This
dual approach provides some seemingly uneven interconnects but benefits from the diverse experience of the
authors.
The authors have retained their own mental images of who they are writing for, often a combination of both
approaches. We hope that you will find this volume useful in pursuit of our mutual goal of truly engineered
rather than merely assembled sound systems.

Thanks to Glen Ballou

Our special thanks to Glen Ballou, who transcribed our material into a publishable format. These simple words
can’t begin to describe the agony he has endured.

Pat Brown,

Don Davis,

Eugene Patronis, Jr.

vii
 Chapter 1
Why Sound System Engineering?
by Don Davis
1.1 Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Basic Electrical Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.4 Hearing Versus Listening . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.5 Craftsmanship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.6 Rigging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.7 Literacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.8 The Art, Philosophy, and Science of Sound. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.9 Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1
 Why Sound System Engineering? 3

“Sound” has over the centuries been associated with 1.3 Mathematics
human hearing (i.e.: “Is there a sound if a tree falls
in the forest without a listener present?”) According From Ohm’s law to the bidding process, an ability
to Webster, “The sensation perceived by the sense of to quickly learn new algorithms both speeds up
hearing.” Also from Webster: “Audio, on the other processes and ensure profits. In today’s markets “cut
hand, has largely been associated with electrical and try” is too expensive of both time and money to
communication circuits.” allow avoidance of basic computer skills; the use of
“System” is a word we use to describe any programs such as Mathcad for both technical and
“experience cluster” that we can map as a set of financial calculations is important. Knowing what
interacting elements over time. Typically a system is the formulae actually used are doing is essential. In
mapped by identifying the pathways of information order to trust any computer program, having done it
flow, as well as possibly the flow of energy, matter, first on paper the hard way, provides knowledge and
and other variables. But the flow of information is confidence in the fast way and leaves you capable of
special; because only information can go from A to detecting unexpected anomalies that might occur.
B while also staying at A. (Consider: photocopy Yes! You do need more than arithmetic.
machines would be useless if one didn’t get to keep
the original). Digital systems, analog systems,
acoustic systems, etc. should be regarded by a 1.4 Hearing Versus Listening
system engineer as so many “black boxes” that need
to be matched, interconnected, and adjusted. The We all hear. But what we listen to depends to a large
internal circuitry should be the interest of the degree on our previous listening experiences. I have
component designer/manufacturer. often stood in the center of an acoustic anomaly
such as a reflection from an undesirable angle,
distance, and level, that was destroying speech intel-
ligibility, and watched the startled expression on the
1.1 Prerequisites face of a person sitting in the pew as a piece of
acoustical material is passed between his ears and
What kind of background should an aspiring sound the reflection, which restored intelligibility.
system engineer possess is an often asked question. Once experienced, your eyes, ears, and brain, can
A list of desirable experiences would include: recognize such problems by simply walking through
them. Sensitive listening is a great plus in sound
1. Some basic electrical training. system work, and it is a sufficient reason to hear as
many venues as possible under normal usage condi-
2. An interest in mathematics.
tions. I am always surprised when I see engineers
3. A good ear (a love of quality sound and acute trying to design a church sound system from a set of
aural senses). drawings without ever having attended a service to
4. Skill with basic tools. see what their actual needs are versus what they’d
like to provide them.
5. Some appreciation of the perils of rigging.
Because all sound system design starts in the
6. Good reading and writing skills. acoustic environment and works back from there to
7. A genuine appreciation for the art, philosophy, the input, failure to experience the normal use of the
and science of sound. space can be fatal to the ultimate end result. On one
occasion I was listening in a mammoth cathedral
from a position behind the altar, when asked by the
administrator, if our design could solve their intelli-
1.2 Basic Electrical Training gibility problem. The priest about to conduct the
service spoke to me, and because of a combination
Time spent as an apprentice electrician is not of a speech defect and in a foreign accent, I was
wasted. In many cases, large sound systems deal unable to understand him to sufficiently compre-
with separate power systems, and safety springs hend his message. I had to tell the administrator that
from knowledge of the power circuits that are our system could only raise the priest’s audio level,
involved. Conduits, cable sizes, and types of not his intelligibility.
grounding and shielding can be complex even at Watching successful ministers, politicians, and
power frequencies. Knowledge of the electrical other public figures use microphones reveals a
codes is a necessary fundamental tool. world of problems unaddressed by the most compe-
4 Chapter 1

tent engineer. In one case the engineer was asked if 1.8 The Art, Philosophy, and Science of Sound
he could “put more soul in the monitor.”
The design of well-engineered sound systems stands
on the shoulders of the giants who created the
1.5 Craftsmanship communication industry. “Art precedes science” is
an axiom that is eternally true. Prof. Higgins as
portrayed in the film, “My Fair Lady,” exemplified
Possession of a guitar does not make one a musician the majesty of language, the science of studying its
nor do tools make a craftsman. Skill with basic tools proper sounds, and meanings, and the engineering
manifests itself in clean solder joints, orderly systems used in that earlier day. Even today the most
cabling, careful labeling on panels and terminals. difficult sound systems to design, build, and operate
Construction of successful loudspeaker arrays is a are those used in the reinforcement of live speech.
challenge to both artistry and craftsmanship. In my Systems that are notoriously poor at speech rein-
experience craftsmanship is a direct expression of forcement often pass reinforcing music with flying
character. colors. Mega churches find that the music reproduc-
tion and reinforcement systems are often best sepa-
rated into two systems
1.6 Rigging

Rigging, in itself, is a business as complex and diffi- 1.9 Fields

cult as engineering the sound system and often
behooves sound contractors to seek out professional From my first view of the rainbow depiction of the
assistance when required to hang large, heavy, and electromagnetic spectrum from dc to gamma ray I
expensive loudspeaker arrays. have striven to gain a conceptual mental view of
various fields, Fig. 1-1. Physical science, during the
I was involved in a consulting job for a major past century, has come to the conclusion that the
public arena venue where the owner intended to Universe is some sort of field. The nature of this
hang the new array from the previous array’s universal field remains controversial—is it matter
rigging. (A complicated system of cables and drums which has mass? Or something more ethereal such
for raising and lowering the arrays). I insisted on as information?
their hiring a notable rigging authority who went up Michael Faraday, 1831, said “Perhaps some
into the rigging with a camera and came down with force is emanating from the wire.”
a dozen photographs of impending disasters, such as A Cambridge man said “Faraday, let me assure
grooves worn in the drums by the cables, frayed you, at Cambridge our electricity flows through the
cables, unsafe connectors, and a lack of safety wire.”
cables, to cite but a few of the problems. There are Oliver Heaviside, 1882, from his book, Electrical
recorded fatalities from falling arrays. It is not a Papers, Vol. 1:
business for amateurs.
Had we not better give up the idea
that energy is transmitted through the
wire altogether? That is the plain
1.7 Literacy course. The energy from the battery
neither goes through the wire one way
This would seem obvious, but is often a weak link in nor the other. Nor is it standing still, the
an otherwise successful background experience. tr ansmission takes place entirely
Sales presentations, bid offers, instruction manuals through the dielectric. What, then, is the
for the operators of your systems, all require reading wire? It is the sink into which the energy
and writing skills. Communications with customers, is poured from the dielectric and there
suppliers, and consultants needs to be thoughtfully wasted, passing from the electrical
and concisely written. For example, the contractor system altogether.
should be on record telling the customer that the
John Ambrose Fleming in 1898 wrote:
design will function properly only if the HVAC
contractor meets the specified noise criteria that is It is important that the student should
provided in the Specification. Failure to do so can be bear in mind that, although we are
disastrous. A memo on file with the owner can save accustomed to speak of current as
the sound contractor and/or consultant from having flowing through the wire in one direc-
to take the blame. tion or the other, this is a mere form of
 Why Sound System Engineering? 5

words. What we call the current in the same roof, so to speak. They merely appear as
wire is, to a large extent, a process special cases of the same fundamental phenom-
going on in the space or material enon…. The presence of a conductor merely causes
outside the wire…. the field be broken up into various components,
some of which are assigned to the conductor itself,
Ernst Guillmin, Communications Networks, Vol. others to the surrounding medium, and still others to
II, 1935 the surface separating the two media.
Heaviside is the only one who From the Standard Handbook for Electrical
considers the nature of the sources as Engineers by Donald G. Fink and H. Wayne
well as the boundary effects both for the Beaty…. There is a section entitled, “Electromag-
initial buildup or transient behavior and netic Wave Propagation Phenomenon.”
for the steady-state condition. He is the The usually accepted view that the conductor
first also, to consider the leakage current produces a magnetic field surrounding it
through the insulation, in view of which must be displaced by the more appropriate one that
the true significance of the inductance the electromagnetic field surrounding the conductor
parameter may be appreciated…. His produces, through a small drain on the energy
work is a first approximation only as
supply, the current in the conductor. Although the
compared with other, more rigorous
value of the latter may be used in computing trans-
treatments. For the engineer, however,
mitted energy, one should clearly recognize that
this first approximation is usually suffi-
physically this current produces only a loss and in
cient….
no way has a direct part in the phenomenon of
Further, power transmission.
Ralph Morrison’s website has some comments
The concept of guided waves, before
on electromagnetic laws.
Maxwell, the physical picture of the
propagation of electricity through a The laws I want to talk about are the basic laws
long circuit was more or less that which of electricity. I’m not referring to circuit theory laws
is frequently presented in elementary as described by Kirchhoff or Ohm but the laws
textbooks, where the hydraulic analogy governing the electric and magnetic fields. These
to a n e le c tr i c ci rcui t i s gi ven f or fields are fundamental to all electrical activity
purposes of visualization. That is, the whether the phenomenon is lightning, electrostatic
seat of the phenomenon was taken to be display, radar, antennas, sunlight, and power gener-
within the conductor. What occurred ation, analog or digital circuitry. These laws are
outside the conductor could be neither often called Maxwell’s equations. Light energy can
definitely formulated nor described. The be directed by lenses, radar energy can be directed
electrical energy was thought of as by waveguides and the energy and power frequen-
being transmitted through the conductor cies can be directed by copper conductors. Thus we
which, therefore, became of prime direct energy flow at different frequencies by using
importance. In fact, if we accept this different materials. For utility power the energy
point of view altogether, it becomes travels in the space between conductors not in the
impossible to conceive of a flow of elec- conductors. In digital circuits the signals and energy
trical energy from one point to another travel in the spaces between traces or between the
w i th o u t th e a i d o f a n i n te r v en i n g traces and the conducting surfaces. Buildings have
conductor of some sort. It has been the halls and walls. People move in the halls not the
writer’s experience that many students walls. Circuits have traces and spaces, signals and
are quite wedded to this point of view, so energy moves in the spaces not in the traces.
much so, in fact, that to them the propa- Scanning the Electromagnetic Spectrum Chart
gation of energy without wires (wireless from dc through radio waves, light itself, out to
transmission) becomes a thing alto- gamma rays we can see that electromagnetic fields
gether apart from other forms of trans- play a key part in our lives, Fig. 1-1.
mission involving an intervening
conducting medium. Researchers studying human consciousness are
finding electromagnetic phenomenon in addition to
An appreciation of Maxwell’s theory of electro- the previously known electrical phenomena. When
magnetic wave propagation brings the so-called EMI (electromagnetic interference) occurs in audio
wireless and wired forms of transmission under the systems RF spectrum analyzers can be useful tools.
6 Chapter 1

Figure 1-1. Electromagnetic spectrum chart.

 Chapter 2
Voices Out of the Past
by Don Davis
2.1 Significant Figures in the History of Audio and Acoustics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 1893—The Magic Year . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3 Bell laboratories and Western Electric . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.4 Harvey Fletcher (1884–1981) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.5 Harry Nyquist (1889–1976) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.6 The dB, dBm, and the VI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.7 Sound System Equalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.8 Acoustic Measurements—Richard C. Heyser (1931–1987) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.9 Calculators and Computers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.10 The Meaning of Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.11 Historical Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

7
 Voices Out of the Past 9

During the fall of 1978, we stopped in Williams-

burg, Virginia. As is our habit, we explored the
old-bookstores and asked whether they had any
books on acoustics. We were told they had just one,
an old one. They brought out a vellum bound first
edition dated 1657, Magiae Universalis by Gaspare
P. Schotto (1608–1666).
He was a colleague of Athanasius Kircher
(1602–1680) whose work was discussed in Fred-
erick Vinton Hunt’s valuable book Origins in
Acoustics. The book, written in Latin, was published
at Herbipoli, the modern Wurzburg, Germany. Some
of the plates from it are shown in Figs. 2-1 through
2-6.

Figure 2-2. Water-powered musical instrument that

fascinated our forefathers as much as computers
interest us today. From Magiae Universalis.

sion. Richard C. Heyser put it best when he said,

“You don’t really own that book, you are its tempo-
rary custodian.”
These men were Galileo’s contemporaries and
were representative of the desire for scientific
knowledge, as well as the collectors of all the myths
of their age.

2.1 Significant Figures in the History of Audio

and Acoustics*

Often, in the modern scheme of things, history is not

mandatory in engineering classes taught at the
university level. Significant historical figures are
encountered as Faraday’s ice-pail experiment,
Maxwell’s equations, Ohms’ law etc., but not
Figure 2-1. Frontpiece of a book published in 1857 at studied in depth.
Herbipoli, the modern Wurzburg, Germany. Electrical engineers encounter the SI terms, poten-
tial difference in volts (Alessandro Volta), current in
In researching the history of this book we found amperes (Andre Marie Ampere), capacitance in
that it was mentioned in the Edinburgh magazine farads (Michael Faraday), and thermodynamic
(volume 12, page 322) in 1790, as well as in Hunt’s, temperature in Kelvin (Lord Kelvin), as units of
Origins in Acoustics, regarding Boyle and Hooke’s measurement. These were living breathing men who
work. Magiae Universalis was used by Robert had occasion to interact with each other and inter-
Boyle (1627–1691) and his assistant Robert Hooke mingle their ideas to the benefit of science. Great
(1635–1703) as they worked to improve air pumps seminal ideas belong to the individual, but the inter-
and experiment with ticking watches in vacuums.
This book described Otto Von Guericke’s work *. Significant Figures in the History of Audio
with air pumps. and Acoustics is an edited version of the
An erudite discussion of Athanasius Kircher’s chapter, “Audio & Acoustic DNA—Do you
book, Phonurgia Nova by Lamberto Tronchin in Know Your Audio and Acoustic Ancestors?” in
January 2009 edition of Acoustics Today, provides the 4th Edition of the Handbook for Sound Engi-
one of the best surveys of the period under discus- neers, edited by Glen Ballou.
10 Chapter 2

Figure 2-3. The first bugging system. Horns such as

these were used by Athanasius Kircher, a contempo-
rary of Kasper Schott, to speak to the gatekeeper from
his quarters and to eavesdrop on the conversation Figure 2-5. How oracles talk or music can be trans-
taking place in the courtyard. His experimental horn mitted from one space to another. From Magiae Univer-
was 22 palms long. (A palm is about 8.7 inches, so his salis.
horn was about 16 feet long). From Magiae Universalis.

Figure 2-6. Illustrations of reflections, focusing, diffu-

Figure 2-4. The basic rules for sound reflection as a sion, time delay, and creeping. From Magiae Univer-
geometric problem. From Magiae Universalis. salis.

mingling of them leads industries. Their predeces- Newton (force), Hertz (frequency), Watt (power,
sors and contemporaries such as Joule (work, energy, radiant flux), Weber (magnetic flux), Tesla (magnetic
heat), Charles Coulomb (electric charge), Isaac flux density), Henry (inductance), and Siemens
 Voices Out of the Past 11

(conductance), are immortalized as international SI instrumental in introducing the terms being estab-
derived units. Kelvin and Ampere alone have names lished in the minds of Kennelly’s peers.
inscribed as SI base units. Kirchhoff diagrams define The truly extraordinary Arthur Edwin Kennelly,
the use of these units in circuit theory. (1861–1939) left school at the age of thirteen and
What the study of these men’s lives provides, to taught himself physics while working as a telegra-
the genuinely interested reader, is the often unique pher. He is said to “have planned and used his time
way the great ideas came to these men, the persistent with great efficiency,” which is evidenced by his
pursuit of the first glimmer, and the serendipity that becoming a member of the faculty of Harvard in
comes from sharing ideas with other talented minds. 1902 while also holding a joint appointment at MIT
As all of this worked its way into the organized from 1913–1924. He was the author of ten books
thinking of mankind, one of the most important and the co-author of eighteen more, as well as
innovations was the development of technical soci- writing more than 350 technical papers. Edison had
eties formed around the time of Newton, where employed A. E. Kennelly to provide physics and
ideas could be heard by a large receptive audience. mathematics to Edison’s intuition and “cut and try”
Some of the world’s best mathematicians strug- experimentation. The reflecting ionosphere theory is
gled to quantify sound in air, in enclosures and in all jointly credited to Kennelly and Heaviside, and
manner of confining pathways. Since the time of known as the Kennelly-Heaviside layer. One of
Euler (1707–1783), Lagrange (1736–1813), and Kennelly’s PhD students was Vannevar Bush, who
d’Alembert (1717–1783), mathematical tools existed ran America’s WWII scientific endeavors.
to analyze wave motion and develop field theory. Steinmetz was not at the April 18, 1893 meeting,
By the birth of the twentieth century, workers in but sent in a letter-of-comment which included:
the telephone industry comprised the most talented It is however, the first instance here,
mathematicians and experimenters in both what was so far as I know, that the attention is
to become electronics and in acoustics. At MIT, the drawn by Mr. Kennelly to the corre-
replacement of Oliver Heaviside’s operational spondence between the electrical term
calculus by Laplace transforms gave them an envi- ‘impedance’ and the complex numbers.
able technical lead in education. The importanc e hereof lies in the
following: the analysis of the complex
plane is very well worked out, hence by
reducing the technical problems to the
2.2 1893—The Magic Year
analysis of complex quantities they are
brought within the scope of a known and
At the April 18, 1893 meeting of the American Insti- well understood science.
tute of Electrical Engineers in New York City,
Arthur Edwin Kennelly (1861–1939) gave a paper Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) working with West-
entitled “Impedance.” inghouse designed the ac generator that was chosen
That same year General Electric, at the insistence in 1893 to power the Chicago World’s Fair.
of Edwin W. Rice, purchased Rudolph Eicke-
meyer’s company for his transformer patents. The
genius, Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865–1923), 2.3 Bell laboratories and Western Electric
worked for Eickemeyer. In the saga of great ideas, I
have always been as intrigued by the managers of The University of Chicago, at the end of the Nine-
great men, as much as the great men themselves. E. teenth Century and the beginning of the Twentieth
W. Rice of General Electric personified true leader- Century, had Robert Millikan, America’s foremost
ship when he looked past the misshaped dwarf that physicist. Frank Jewett, who had a doctorate in
was Steinmetz, to the mind present in the man. physics from MIT, and now worked for Western
General Electric’s engineering preeminence, in Electric, was able to recruit Millikan’s top students.
those years, proceeded directly from Rice’s extraor- George A. Campbell (1870–1954) had by 1899 devel-
dinary hiring of Steinmetz. oped successful “loading coils” capable of extending
Dr. Michael I. Pupin of Columbia University was the range and quality of the, at that time, unamplified
present at the Kennelly paper. Pupin mentioned telephone circuits. Unfortunately, Prof. Michael
Oliver Heaviside’s use of the word impedance in Pupin had also conceived the idea and beat him to the
1887. This meeting established the correct definition patent office. Bell telephone paid Pupin $435,000 for
of the word and established its use within the elec- the patent and by 1925, the Campbell designed
tric industry. Kennelly’s paper, along with the loading coils had saved Bell Telephone Company
groundwork laid by Oliver Heaviside in 1887, was $100,000,000 in the cost of copper wire alone.
12 Chapter 2

To sense the ability of loading coils to extend the I then traveled to Bell Telephone Laboratories in
range of unamplified telephone circuits, Bell had New Jersey, where we made a demonstration of our
reached New York to Denver by their means alone. results using Klipsch horns in the Arnold Audito-
Until Thomas B. Doolittle evolved a method in 1877 rium. After our demonstration we were shown one
for the manufacture of hard drawn copper, the metal of the original Fletcher loudspeakers.
had been unusable for telephony due to its inability A perspective can be gained, compared to
to support its own weight over usable distances. today’s products, when it is realized that Western
Copper wire went from a tensile strength of 28,000 Electric components like the 555 and the 597 are to
pounds per square inch with an elongation of 37%, be found today in Japan, where originals sell for up
to a tensile strength of 65,000 pounds per square to five figures. It is estimated that 99% of the
inch and a elongation of 1%. existing units are in Japan. It is of interest to note
H. D. Arnold, with the advent of usable copper that many of today’s seekers of quality sound repro-
wire, the vacuum tube amplifier, 130,000 telephone duction are still building tube-type amplifiers
poles, and 25 tons of copper wire was able to estab- employing the W. E. 300 B vacuum tubes.
lish transcontinental telephony in the year 1915.
There was also a public address system at those
ceremonies celebrating this accomplishment.
2.5 Harry Nyquist (1889–1976)

2.4 Harvey Fletcher (1884–1981) The word inspired means “to have been touched by
the hand of God.” Harry Nyquist’s thirty-seven
In 1933, Harvey Fletcher, Steinberg and Snow, years and 138 US patents while at Bell Telephone
Wente and Thuras and a host of other Bell Labs Laboratories personifies “inspired.” In acoustics the
engineers gave birth to “Audio Perspective” demon- Nyquist plot is, by far, my favorite for a first look at
strations of three channel stereophonic sound an environment driven by unknown source. Nyquist
capable of exceeding the dynamic range of the live also worked out the mathematics that allowed
orchestra. Their exhaustive study led to the conclu- amplifier stability to be calculated leaving us the
sion that to reproduce the sound field would require Nyquist plot which is one of the most useful audio
an infinite number of sources and that the best and acoustic analysis tools ever developed. His
compromise lay in three channels. They also cohort, Hendrik Bodie, gave us the frequency and
demonstrated that two channels were sufficient over phase plots as separate measurements.
headphones for binaural recordings. They under- Karl Kupfmuller (1897–1977) was a German
stood that for stereophonic reproduction each of the engineer who paralleled Nyquist work, indepen-
three channels had to cover all of the audience, a dently deriving fundamental results in information
fact many contemporaries are unaware of. Early in transmission, in closed loop modeling, including a
my career at Altec, I had the privilege of working stability criterion. Kupfmuller as early as 1928 used
with William Snow and having full discussions of block diagrams to represent closed loop linear
their 1933 system. circuits. He is believed to be the first to do so.
Edward C. Wente and Albert L.Thuras were Today’s computers, as well as digital audio
responsible for the full range, low distortion, devices, were first envisioned in the mid-1800s by
high-powered sound reproduction using condenser Charles Babbage. The mathematics discussed by
microphones, compression drivers, multicellular Lady Lovelace, the only legitimate daughter of Lord
exponential horns, and horn loaded low-frequency Byron, even predicted the use of a computer to
enclosures, all of which were their original designs. generate musical tones.
The Fletcher loudspeaker, as designed by Wente and Claude Shannon went from Nyquist’s paper on
Thuras, was a three-way unit consisting of an 18 the mathematical limit of communication to develop
inch low-frequency driver horn loaded woofer, the “Information Theory,” which is so important to
incomparable W. E. 555 as a mid range, and the today’s communication channels.
W. E. 597A high-frequency unit.
The power amplifiers and transmission lines
were capable of full dynamic range from 30 Hz to
15,000 Hz, capabilities often claimed today but 2.6 The dB, dBm, and the VI
seldom realized.
In 1959, Carolyn and I repeated the original The development of the dB from the mile of stan-
geometry tests of the 1933 experiments while dard cable by Bell Labs, their development and
working for Klipsch and Associates. Mr Klipsch and sharing of the decibel, the dBm, and the VU via the
 Voices Out of the Past 13

design of VI devices, changed system design into an The control these equalizers allowed over acoustic
engineering design. feedback in live sound systems quickly led to much
The first motion pictures were silent. Fortunes more powerful sound reinforcement systems.
were made by actors who could convey visual I introduced variable system equalization in
emotion. When motion pictures acquired sound in special sessions at the screening facilities in August
1928, again via Western Electric’s efforts, a large 1969 to the head sound men, Fred Wilson at MGM,
number of these well-known personalities failed to Herb Taylor at Disney, and Al Green at Warner Bros.
make the transition from silent to sound. The faces Seven Arts. These demonstrations were prior to my
and figures failed to match the voices the minds of leaving Altec to start Synergetic Audio Concepts and
the silent movie viewers had assigned them. Later, others reaped the benefits of this work.
when radio became television almost all the radio Some early workers in equalization imagined
talent was able to make the transition because the they were equalizing the room; equalization is elec-
familiar voices predominated over any mental visual trical, not acoustical, and what it always adjusts is
image the radio listener had assigned to that the input to the loudspeaker terminals. It allowed
performer. Often, at the opera, the great voices will feedback in a reinforcement system, containing a
not look the part, but just a few notes nullify any highly efficient, but uneven amplitude response
negative visual impression for the true lover of loudspeaker, to be controlled, while increasing the
opera, whereas appearance will not compensate for acoustic energy in the room.
a really bad voice.
In 1928, a group of Western Electric engineers
became the Electrical Research Products, Inc. 2.8 Acoustic Measurements—Richard C.
(ERPI), in order to service the motion picture Heyser (1931–1987)
theaters using Western Electric sound equipment. At
the termination of World War II, the standard for the Plato said, “God ever geometrizes.” Richard Heyser,
best bass reproduction was the loudspeakers the geometer, should feel at ease with God. To those
installed in the better motion picture theaters. The whose minds respond to the visual, Heyser ’s
goal of the designers of consumer component audio measurements shed a bright light on difficult mathe-
reproduction was to approach the motion picture matical concepts. Working from Dennis Gabor’s
theater quality. Western Electric had decimated their (1900–1979) analytic signal theory, the Heyser spiral
competition, RCA, in the theater business, so RCA displays the concept of the complex plane in a single
went to court and obtained a consent decree which visual flash. Heyser was a scientist in the purest
restricted Western Electric in the field of motion sense of the word, employed by NASA, and audio
picture sound. At this point some of the engineers was his hobby. When I first met Richard C Heyser in
involved formed All Technical Services (Altec), the mid-1960s, Richard worked for Jet Propulsion
which is why it is pronounced all tech, not al-tect. Laboratory as a senior scientist. He invited me to his
One of the pioneer engineers told me, “Those days home to see his personal laboratory. The first thing
were the equivalent of one ohm across Fort Knox.” he showed me on his Time Delay Spectrometry
They bought the Western Electric theater inventory (TDS) equipment was the Nyquist plot of a crossover
for pennies on the dollar.They also bought the network he was examining.
Lansing Manufacturing Company and Peerless I gave the display a quick look and said, “That
Manufacturing which brought James B. Lansing, looks like a Nyquist plot!”
Ercel Harrison and Bill Martin (Jim Lansing’s He replied, “It is.”
brother) into Altec. “But,” I said, “no one makes a Nyquist analyzer.”
“That’s right,” he replied.
At this point I entered the modern age of audio
2.7 Sound System Equalization analysis. It was a revelation to watch Dick tuning in
the signal delay between his microphone and the
Dr. Wayne Rudmose was the earliest researcher to loudspeaker he was testing until the correct band-
perform meaningful sound system equalization. pass filter Nyquist display appeared on the screen.
Dr. Rudmose published a truly remarkable paper in Seeing the epicycles caused by resonances in the
Noise Control (a supplementary Journal of the loudspeaker, and the passage of non-minimum
Acoustical Society of America) in July 1958. At the phase responses back through all quadrants, opened
AES session in the fall of 1967, I gave the first up a million questions.
paper on the one-third of an octave contiguous Heyser’s work led to loudspeakers with vastly
equalizer, which Altec named Acousta-Voicing. improved spatial response, something totally unrec-
Dr. Rudmose was chairman of that AES session. ognized in the amplitude-only days. Arrays became
14 Chapter 2

predictable and coherent. Signal alignment entered 2.10 The Meaning of Communication
the thought of system designers. Heyser’s Envelope
Time Curve (ETC) technology resulted in the The future of audio and acoustics stands on the
chance to meaningfully study loudspeaker–room Shoulders of the Giants that we have discussed, and
interactions. numerous ones that we have inadvertently over-
Because the most widely taught mathematical looked. The discoverers of new and better ways to
tools proceed from impulse responses, Heyser’s generate, distribute, and control sound will be
transform is perceived “through a glass darkly.” It is measured consciously or unconsciously by their
left in the hands of practitioners to further research predecessor’s standards. Fad and fundamentals will
into the transient behavior of loudspeakers. The be judged eventually, and put into their proper place.
decades-long lag of academia will eventually apply Age councils that “the ancients are stealing our
the lessons of the Heyser transform to transducer inventions.” Understanding an old idea that is new
signal delay and signal delay interactions. to you can be as thrilling as it was to the first person
I hold Harry Olson of RCA in high regard to make the discovery.
because, as the editor of the Journal of the Audio The history of audio and acoustics is the saga of
Engineering Society in 1969, he found Richard C. the mathematical understanding of fundamental
Heyser’s original paper in the wastebasket; it had physical laws. Hearing and seeing are illusionary,
been rejected by means of that society’s inadequate, restricted by the inadequacy of our physical senses.
at that time, peer review system. That the human brain processes music and art in
a different hemisphere from speech and mathe-
matics suggests the difference between information,
2.9 Calculators and Computers that can be mathematically defined, and communi-
cation that cannot. A message is the flawless trans-
Richard C. Heyser gave us the instrumentation and mission of the text. Drama, music, and great oratory
Tom Osborne of Hewlett-Packard gave us the mathe- cannot be flawlessly transmitted by known physical
matical tools to begin to understand what we were systems. For example, the spatial integrity of a great
actually doing in both electronics and acoustics as orchestra in a remarkable acoustic space is today,
applied to sound reinforcement systems. Back in the even with our astounding technological strides, only
1960s, we utilized test equipment from realizable by attending the live performance. The
Hewlett-Packard, General Radio,Tektronics, and complexity of the auditory senses defies efforts to
Bruel and Kjaer. I purchased one of the very first record or transmit it faithfully.
Hewlett-Packard 9100 computer calculators The devilish power that telecommunications has
designed by Tom Osborne. The 9100’s transcen- provided demagogues is frightening, but shared
dental functions, memory, and print out facilities led communication has revealed to a much larger audi-
to lengthy acoustic design algorithms. Many of these ence the prosperity of certain ideas over others, and
same algorithms are still used in today’s computers. one can hope that the metaphysics behind progress
When the HP 35 handheld calculator, so named will penetrate a majority of the minds out there.
for its thirty-five keys, appeared we immediately put That the audio industry’s history has barely
it to use in our teaching. The proliferation of begun is evidenced every time one attends a live
easy-to-use, accurate software such as Mathcad, performance. We will, one day, look back on the
Matlab, and Mathematica in today’s computers neglect of the metaphysical element, perhaps after
encourages engineers to explore more precise we have uncovered the parameters, at present easily
avenues of design. It was of interest to me that a heard but unmeasurable, by our present sciences.
correspondent, to the best Listserv in the business, History awaits the ability to generate the sound field
stated to his peers that he had entered the audio rather than a sound field. When a computer is finally
industry via digital equipment and its operation, and offered to us that are capable of such generation, the
was at a loss to understand analog audio. question it must answer is, “how does it feel?”
I first explored the magic of communication via a
crystal radio, then the vacuum tube technology,
followed by transistors, integrated circuits, and now 2.11 Historical Notes
fully digita l equipment ele ctronically; it is
comforting to turn to the acoustic side of sound rein- When I first ventured into audio in 1951 with
forcement as an old familiar friend. When, as I nothing more than a background in amateur radio
expect in the not too distant future, the reinforce- (Ham) and some exposure to engineering in general,
ment system reaches the human brain sans passage at the university level, it was interest in classical
via air the cycle will be complete. music and its reproduction that led the way.
 Voices Out of the Past 15

Fortunately, the postwar revolution in audio was at Noble, and a host of employees that had originally
its height and our operation of a small but eclectic been part of ERPI, the motion picture service divi-
“hi-fi” shop, The Golden Ear, led to personally sion of Western Electric. These were men who had
meeting many of the pioneers of that movement. known Wente and Thuras, Harvey Fletcher, Black,
Paul Klipsch, Rudy Bozak, Avery Fisher, Frank Bode, Nyquist, and Jim Lansing prior to his tragic
McIntosh, Herman Hosmer Scott, Saul Marantz and early death. I was a vice president of Altec when I
others, literally came to our little shop to help us sell left in December 1972 to start Synergetic Audio
the products they had designed and manufactured. Concepts (Syn Aud Con).
Purdue University faculty and students were among The next twenty-three years were spent teaching
our customers; listening to the conversations classes in the basics of audio and acoustics,
between these customers and the manufacturers consulting and writing texts including Sound System
participating soon made us aware of the names and Engineering, Acoustic Tests and Measurements and
fame of the communication industry’s giants, as How to Build Loudspeaker Enclosures, plus many
well as the early acoustic giants such as Rayleigh, papers for the Journal of the Audio Engineering
Sabine, and Helmholtz. Society, Audio Magazine, and other popular publica-
In 1951, there was no such thing as the Internet tions, in addition to hundreds of articles in the
and the only way to get to know these giants was to Syn-Aud-Con Newsletters.
haunt old bookstores and gradually collect their I have been led to these reminiscences because of
written works. Our book collecting continued and the usefulness of knowing how we got here, as the
gradually grew to over 750 volumes on audio and only sure guide to where we might be going. There-
acoustics. fore, I hope you will not ignore our attempts to share
In late 1958, I joined Klipsch & Associates as these underlying concepts with you to encourage
vice president which gave me the chance to travel you to become a professional in the communication
nationally and internationally, including sound industry. Many of the best of tomorrow’s innova-
demonstrations at the Brussels World’s Fair, and at tions will be found by studying the best of the old,
the American National Exhibition in Moscow, combined with the new materials and techniques of
where we spent two-and-half months during the the present. “The ancients are still stealing our
summer of 1959. inventions” is all too true and many papers written
In late 1959, I joined Altec Lansing where I was at the turn of the Twentieth Century have ideas not
privileged to work with three unique innovators in able to be implemented when the article was written,
audio technology: John Hilliard, Art Davis, Jim but are now possible.
 Chapter 3
Sound and Our Brain
by Don Davis
3.1 The Human Brain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.2 The Current Era . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.3 Unexpected Validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

17
 Another Random Document on
Scribd Without Any Related Topics
you back here this evening not later than nine. I shall have gone through the
accounts by then, and...'

"At this point the door was shut and witness heard nothing more. But she
reiterated the statements which she had already made to the police, and
which I have just retold you, about Mr. Jessup staying late at the office and
her taking him in some sandwiches, when he told her that he was expecting
Mr. Leighton at about nine o'clock and did not wish to be disturbed by
anybody else. Witness was asked to repeat what the deceased had actually
said to her with reference to this matter, and she laid great stress on Mr.
Jessup's harsh and dictatorial manner, so different, she said, to his usual
gentlemanly ways.

"'"I don't want to see anybody else—not any of you," that's what he said,'
Mrs. Tufnell replied, with an air of dignity, and then added: 'As if Ann
Weber or I had ever thought of disturbing him when he was at work!'

"Witness went on to relate that, after she had taken in the tray of tea and
sandwiches, she went upstairs and found Ann Weber sitting in her room by
herself. Mark, the girl explained, had gone off, very disappointed that they
couldn't all go together to the cinema. Mrs. Tufnell argued the point for a
moment or two, as she didn't see why Ann should have refused to go if she
wanted to see the show. But the girl seemed to have turned sulky. Anyway,
it was too late, she said, as Mark had gone off by himself: he had booked
the places and didn't want to waste them, so he was going to get another
friend to go with him.

"Mrs. Tufnell then settled down to do some sewing, and Ann turned over
the pages of a stale magazine. Mrs. Tufnell thought that she appeared
restless and agitated. Her cheeks were flushed and at the slightest sound she
gave a startled jump. Presently she said that she had some silver to clean in
the pantry, and went downstairs to do it. Some little time after that there
was a ring at the front-door bell, and Mrs. Tufnell heard Ann going through
the hall to open the door. A quarter of an hour went by, and then another.

"Mrs. Tufnell began to wonder what Ann was up to. She put down her
sewing and started to go downstairs. The first thing that struck her was that
all the lights on the stairs and landing were out; the house appeared very
silent and dark; only a glimmer came from one of the lights downstairs in
the hall at the foot of the stairs.

"Mrs. Tufnell went down cautiously. Strangely enough, it did not occur
to her to turn on the lights on her way. After she had passed the first-floor
landing she heard the sound of muffled voices coming from the hall below.
Thinking that she recognised Ann's voice, she called to her: 'Is that you,
Ann?' And Ann immediately replied: 'Coming, aunt.' 'Who are you talking
to?' Mrs. Tufnell asked, and as Ann did not answer this time, she went on:
'Is it Mr. Leighton?' And Ann said: 'Yes. He is just going.'

"Mrs. Tufnell stood there, waiting. She was half-way down the stairs
between the first floor and the hall, and she couldn't see Ann or Mr.
Leighton, but a moment or two later she heard Ann's voice saying quite
distinctly: 'Well, good-night, Mr. Leighton, see you to-morrow as usual.'
After which the front door was opened, then banged to again, and presently
Ann came tripping back across the hall.

"'You go to bed now, Ann,' Mrs. Tufnell said to her. 'I'll see Mr. Jessup
off when he goes. He won't be long now, I dare say.'

"'Oh, but,' Ann said, 'Mr. Jessup has been gone some time.'

"'Gone some time?' Mrs. Tufnell exclaimed. 'He can't have been gone
some time. Why, he was expecting Mr. Leighton, and Mr. Leighton has only
just gone.'

"Ann shrugged her shoulders. 'I can only tell you what I know, Mrs.
Tufnell,' she said acidly. 'You can come down and see for yourself. The
office is shut up and all the lights out.'

"'But didn't Mr. Leighton see Mr. Jessup?'

"'No, he didn't. Mr. Jessup told Mr. Leighton to wait, and then he went
away without seeing him.'

"'That's funny,' Mrs. Tufnell remarked, dryly. 'What was Mr. Leighton
doing in the house, then, all this time? I heard the front-door bell half an
hour ago and more.'

"'That's no business of yours, Aunt Sarah,' the girl retorted pertly. 'And it
wasn't half an hour, so there!'

"Mrs. Tufnell did not argue the point any further. Mechanically she went
downstairs and ascertained in point of fact that the door of the office and the
show-room on the ground floor were both locked as usual, and that the key
of the office was outside in the lock. This was entirely in accordance with
custom. Mrs. Tufnell, through force of habit, did just turn the key and open
the door of the office. She just peeped in to see that the lights were really all
out. Satisfied that everything was dark she then closed and relocked the
door. Ann, in the meanwhile, stood half-way up the stairs watching. Then
the two women went upstairs together. They had only just got back in their
room when the front-door bell rang once more.

"'Now, whoever can that be?' Mrs. Tufnell exclaimed.

"'Don't trouble, aunt,' Ann said with alacrity. 'I'll run down and see.'
Which she did. Again it was some time before she came back, and when
she did get back to her room, she seemed rather breathless and agitated.

"'Some one for Mr. Jessup,' she said in answer to Mrs. Tufnell's rather
acid remark that she had been gone a long time. 'He kept me talking ever
such a while. I don't think he believed me when I said Mr. Jessup had gone.'

"'Who was it?' witness asked.

"'I don't know,' the girl replied. 'I never saw him before.'

"'Didn't you ask his name?'

"'I did. But he said it didn't matter—he would call again to-morrow.'

"After that the two women sat for a little while longer, Mrs. Tufnell
sewing, and Ann still rather restlessly turning over the pages of a magazine.
At ten o'clock they went to bed. And that was the end of the day as far as
the household of Mr. Jessup was concerned.
 "You may well imagine that all the amateur detectives who were present
at the inquest had made up their minds by now that Arthur Leighton had
murdered Mr. Seton Jessup, and robbed the till both before and after the
crime. It was a simple deduction easily arrived at and presenting the usual
features. A flirty minx, an enamoured young man, extravagance, greed,
opportunity, and supreme temptation. Amongst the public there were many
who did not even think it worth while to hear further witnesses. To their
minds the hangman's rope was already round young Leighton's neck. Of
course, I admit that at this point it seemed a very clear case. It was only
after this that complications arose and soon the investigations bristled with
difficulties.

§4

"After a good deal of tedious and irrelevant evidence had been gone
through the inquest was adjourned, and the public left the court on the
tiptoe of expectation as to what the morrow would bring. Nor was any one
disappointed, for on the morrow the mystery deepened, even though there
was plenty of sensational evidence for newspaper reporters to feed on.

"The police, it seems, had brought forward a very valuable witness in the
person of the point policeman, who was on duty from eight o'clock onwards
on the evening of the sixteenth at the corner of Clerkenwell Road and
Fulton Gardens. No. 13 is only a few yards up the street. The man had
stated, it seems, that soon after half-past eight he had seen a man come
along Fulton Gardens from the direction of Holborn, go up to the front door
of No. 13 and ring the bell. He was admitted after a minute or two, and he
stayed in the house about half an hour. It was a dark night, and there was a
slight drizzle; the witness could not swear to the man's identity. He was
slight and of middle height, and walked like a young man. When he arrived
he wore a bowler hat and no overcoat, but when he came out again he had
an overcoat on and a soft grey hat, and carried the bowler in his hand.
Witness noticed as he walked away up Fulton Gardens towards Finsbury
this time he took off the soft hat, slipped it into the pocket of his overcoat,
and put on the bowler. About ten minutes later, not more, another visitor
called at No. 13. He also was slight and tallish, and he wore an overcoat and
a bowler hat. He turned into Fulton Gardens from Clerkenwell Road, but on
the opposite corner to the one where witness was standing. He rang the bell
and was admitted, and stayed about twenty minutes. He walked away in the
direction of Holborn. Witness would not undertake to identify either of
these two visitors; he had not been close enough to them to see their faces,
and there was a good deal of fog that night as well as the drizzle. There was
nothing suspicious looking about either of the men. They had walked quite
openly up to the front door, rung the bell, and been admitted. The only thing
that had struck the constable as queer was the way the first visitor had
changed hats when he walked away.

"Witness swore positively that no one else had gone in or out of No. 13
that night except those two visitors. How important this evidence was you
will understand presently.

"After this young Tufnell was called. He was a shy-looking fellow, with
a nervous manner altogether out of keeping with his dark expressive eyes—
eyes which he had obviously inherited from his mother and which gave him
a foreign as well as a romantic appearance. He was said to be musical and
to be a talented amateur actor. Every one agreed, it seems, that he had
always been a very good son to his mother until his love for Ann Weber had
absorbed all his thoughts and most of his screw. He explained that he was
junior clerk to Mr. Jessup, and as far as he knew had always given
satisfaction. On the sixteenth he had also noticed that the guv'nor was not
quite himself. He appeared unusually curt and irritable with everybody.
Witness had not been in the house all the evening. When his mother told
him that neither she nor Ann could go to the cinema with him he went off
by himself, and after the show he went straight back to his digs near the
Alexandra Palace. He only heard of the tragedy when he arrived at the
office as usual on the morning of the seventeenth. His evidence would have
seemed uninteresting and unimportant but for the fact that while he gave it
he glanced now and again in the direction where Ann Weber sat beside her
aunt. It seemed as if he were all the time mutely asking for her approval of
what he was saying, and presently when the coroner asked him whether he
knew the cause of his employer's irritability, he very obviously looked at
Ann before he finally said: 'No, sir, I don't!'
 "After that Ann Weber was called. Of course it had been clear all along
that she was by far the most important witness in this mysterious case, and
when she rose from her place, looking very trim and neat in her navy-blue
coat and skirt, with a jaunty little hat pulled over her left eye, and wearing
long amber earrings that gave her pretty face a piquant expression, every
one settled down comfortably to enjoy the sensation of the afternoon.

"Ann, who was thoroughly self-possessed, answered the coroner's

preliminary questions quite glibly, and when she was asked to relate what
occurred at No. 13, Fulton Gardens on the night of the sixteenth, she
plunged into her story without any hesitation or trace of nervousness.

"'At about half-past eight,' she said, 'or it may have been later—I won't
swear as to the time—there was a ring at the front-door bell. I was down in
the pantry, and as I came upstairs I heard the office door being opened.
When I got into the passage I saw Mr. Jessup standing in the doorway of the
office. He had his spectacles on his nose, and a pen in his hand. He looked
as if he had just got up from his desk.'

"'"If that's young Leighton," he said to me, "tell him I'll see him to-
morrow. I can't be bothered now." Then he went back into the office and
shut the door.

"'I opened the door to Mr. Leighton,' witness continued, 'and he came in
looking very cold and wet. I told him that Mr. Jessup didn't want to see him
to-night. He seemed very pleased at this, but he wouldn't go away, and
when I told him I was busy he said that I couldn't be so unkind as to turn a
fellow out into the rain without giving him a drink. Now I could see that
already Mr. Leighton he'd had a bit too much, and I told him so quite
plainly. But there! he wouldn't take "No" for an answer, and as it really was
jolly cold and damp I told him to go and sit down in the servants' hall while
I got him a hot toddy. I went down into the kitchen and put the kettle on and
cut a couple of sandwiches. I don't know where Mr. Leighton was during
that time or what he was doing. I was in the kitchen some time, because I
couldn't get the kettle to boil as the fire had gone down and we have no gas
downstairs. When I took the tray into the servants' hall Mr. Leighton was
there, and again I told him that I didn't think he ought to have any more
whisky, but he only laughed, and was rather impudent, so I just put the tray
down, and then I thought that I would run upstairs and see if Mr. Jessup
wanted anything. I was rather surprised when I got to the hall to see that all
the lights up the stairs had been turned off. There's a switch down in the hall
that turns off the lot. The whole house looked very dark. There was but a
very little light that came from the lamp at the other end of the hall, near the
front door. I was just thinking that I would turn on the lights again when I
saw what I could have sworn was Mr. Jessup coming out of his office. He
had already got his hat and coat on, and when he came out of the office he
shut the door and turned the key in the lock, just as Mr. Jessup always did.
It never struck me for a moment that it could be anybody but him. Though
it was dark, I recognised his hat and his overcoat, and his own way of
turning the key. I spoke to him,' witness continued in answer to a question
put to her by the coroner, 'but he didn't reply; he just went straight through
the hall and out by the front door. Then after a bit Mr. Leighton came up,
and I told him Mr. Jessup had gone. He was quite pleased, and stopped
talking in the hall for a moment, and then aunt called to me and Mr.
Leighton went away.'

"Witness was then questioned as to the other visitor who called later that
same evening, but she stated that she had no idea who it was. 'He came
about nine,' she explained, 'and I went down to open the door. He kept me
talking ever such a time, asking all sorts of silly questions; I didn't know
how to get rid of him, and he wouldn't leave his name. He said he would
call again and that it didn't matter.'

"Ann Weber here gave the impression that the unknown visitor had
stopped for a flirtation with her on the doorstep, and her smirking and pert
glances rather irritated the coroner. He pulled her up sharply by putting a
few straight questions to her. He wanted to pin her down to a definite
statement as to the time when (1) she opened the door to Mr. Leighton, (2)
she saw what she thought was Mr. Jessup go out of the house, and (3) the
second visitor arrived. Though doubtful as to the exact time, Ann was quite
sure that the three events occurred in the order in which she had originally
related, and in this she was, of course, corroborating the evidence of the
point policeman. But there was the mysterious contradiction. Ann Weber
swore that Mr. Leighton followed her up from the servants' hall just after
she had seen the mysterious individual go out by the front door. On the
other hand, she couldn't swear what happened while she was busy in the
kitchen getting the hot toddy for Mr. Leighton. She had been trying to make
the fire burn up, and had rattled coals and fire-irons. She certainly had not
heard any one using the telephone, which was in the office, and she did not
know where Mr. Leighton was during that time.

"Nor would she say what was in her mind when first she saw her
employer lying dead over the desk and exclaimed: 'My God! He has killed
him!' And when the coroner pressed her with questions she burst into tears.
Except for this her evidence had, on the whole, been given with
extraordinary self-possession. It was a terrible ordeal for a girl to have to
stand up before a jury and, roughly speaking, to swear away the character of
a man with whom she had been on intimate terms.... The character, did I
say? I might just as well have said the life, because whatever doubts had
lurked in the public mind about Arthur Leighton's guilt, or at least
complicity in the crime, those doubts were dispelled by the girl's evidence.
For I need not tell you, I suppose, that every man present that second day at
the inquest had already made up his mind that Ann Weber was lying to save
her sweetheart. No one believed in the mysterious impersonator of Mr.
Jessup. It was Arthur Leighton, they argued, who had murdered his
employer and robbed the till, and Ann Weber knew it and had invented the
story in order to drag a red herring across the trail.

"I must say that the man himself did not make a good impression when
he was called in his turn. As he stepped forward with a swaggering air, and
a bold glance at coroner and jury, the interest which he aroused was not a
kindly one. He was rather a vulgar-looking creature, with a horsey get-up,
high collar, stock-tie, fancy waistcoat, and so on. His hair was of a ginger
colour, his eyes light, and his face tanned. Every one noticed that he winked
at Ann Weber when he caught her eye, and also that the girl immediately
averted her glance and almost imperceptibly shrugged her shoulders.
Thereupon Leighton frowned and very obviously swore under his breath.

"Questioned as to his doings on the sixteenth, he admitted that 'the

guv'nor had been waxy with him, because,' as he put it with an indifferent
swagger, 'there were a few pounds missing from the till.' He also admitted
that he had not been looking forward to the evening's interview, but that he
had not dared refuse to come. In order to kill time, and to put heart into
himself, he had gone with a couple of friends to the Café Royal in Regent
Street, and they all had whiskies and sodas till it was time for him to go to
Fulton Gardens. His friends were to wait for him until he returned, when
they intended to have supper together. Witness then went to Fulton Gardens
and saw Ann Weber, who told him that the guv'nor didn't wish to see him.
This, according to his own picturesque language, was a little bit of all right.
He stayed for a few minutes talking to Ann, and she gave him a hot toddy.
He certainly didn't think he had stayed as long as half an hour, but then,
when a fellow was talking to a pretty girl ... eh? ... what? ...

"The coroner curtly interrupted his fatuous explanations by asking him at

what time he had left his friends, and at what time he had met them again
subsequently. Witness was not very sure; he thought he left the Café Royal
about half-past eight, but it might have been earlier or later. He took a bus
to the bottom of Fulton Gardens. It was beastly cold and wet, and he was
very grateful to Ann for giving him a hot drink. He denied that he had been
drinking too much, or that he had demanded the hot drink. It was Ann
Weber who had offered to get it for him. Jolly pretty girl, Annie-bird, and
not shy. Witness concluded his evidence by swearing positively that he had
waited in the servants' hall all the while that Ann Weber got him the toddy;
he had followed her down, and not gone upstairs or seen anything of Mr.
Jessup all the time he was in the house. When he left Fulton Gardens he
tried to get a bus back to Regent Street, but many of them were full and it
was rather late before he got back to the Café Royal.

"It was very obvious that as the coroner continued to put question after
question to him, Arthur Leighton became vaguely conscious of the feeling
of hostility towards him which had arisen in the public mind. He lost
something of his swagger, and his face under the tan took on a greyish hue.
From time to time he glanced at Ann Weber, but she obstinately looked
another way.

"Undoubtedly he felt that he was caught in a network of damnatory

evidence which he was unable to combat. The day ended, however, with
another adjournment; the police wanted a little more time before taking
drastic action. The public so often blame them for being in too great a hurry
to fasten an accusation on the flimsiest grounds that one is pleased to record
such a noteworthy instance when they really did not leave a single stone
unturned before they arrested Arthur Leighton on the charge of murder.
They did everything they could to find some proof of the existence and
identity of the individual whom Ann Weber professed to have seen while
Leighton was still in the house. But all their efforts in that direction came to
naught, whilst Leighton himself denied having had an accomplice just as
strenuously as he did his own guilt.

"He was brought up before the magistrate, charged with the terrible
crime. No one, the police argued, had so strong a motive for the crime or
such an opportunity. Alternatively, no one else could have admitted the
mysterious impersonator of Mr. Jessup into the house, the accomplice who
did the deed, whilst Leighton engaged Ann Weber's attention, always
supposing that he did exist, which was never proved, and which the
evidence of the police constable refuted. People who dabbled in spiritualism
and that sort of thing were pleased to think that the mysterious personage
whom the housemaid saw was the ghost of poor old Jessup, who was then
lying murdered in his office, stricken by Leighton's hand. But even the most
psychic-minded individual was unable to give a satisfactory explanation for
the ghost having changed hats while he walked away from that fateful No.
13.

"Altogether the question of hats played an important role in the drama of

Leighton's arrest and final discharge. The magistrate did not commit him
for trial, because the case for the prosecution collapsed suddenly like a pack
of cards. It was the question of hats that saved Leighton's neck from the
hangman's rope. You remember, perhaps, that in his evidence he had stated
that before starting to interview his irate employer he had been with some
friends at the Café Royal in Regent Street, and that subsequently he met
these friends there for supper. Well, although it appeared impossible to
establish definitely the time when Leighton left the Café Royal to go to
Fulton Gardens, there were two or three witnesses prepared to swear that he
was back again at a quarter to ten. Now this was very important. It seems
that his friends, who were waiting at the Café Royal, were getting
impatient, and at twenty minutes to ten by the clock one of them—a fellow
named Richard Hurrill—said he would go outside and see if he could see
anything of Leighton. He strolled on as far as Piccadilly Circus where the
buses stop that come from the City, and a minute or two later he saw
Leighton step out of one. He seemed a little fuzzy in the head, and Hurrill
chaffed him a bit. Then he took him by the arm and led him back in triumph
to the Café Royal.

"Now mark what followed," the funny creature went on, whilst all at
once his fingers started working away as if for dear life on his bit of string.
"A hat—a soft grey hat—with an overcoat wrapped round it, were found in
the area of a derelict house in Blackhorse Road, Walthamstow, close to the
waterworks, and identified as the late Mr. Seton Jessup's overcoat and hat. I
don't suppose that you have the least idea where Blackhorse Road,
Walthamstow, is, but let me tell you that it is at the back of beyond in the
northeast of London. If you remember, the point policeman had stated that
the first visitor had called at No. 13 Fulton Gardens at half-past eight, and
stayed half an hour. He then walked away in the direction of Finsbury. That
visitor, the police argued, was Arthur Leighton, who had murdered Mr.
Jessup and sent the telephone message to Fitzjohn's Avenue; then, hearing
Ann Weber moving about downstairs and frightened at being caught by her,
he had put on the deceased's hat and coat and slipped out of the house. Ann,
however, had recognised him. She had involuntarily given him away when
the housekeeper asked her whom she was talking to, so she invented the
story of having seen what she thought was Mr. Jessup in order to save her
sweetheart.

"It was a logical theory enough, but here came the evidence of the hat.
The man who walked away from Fulton Gardens at nine o'clock, whom the
point policeman saw changing his hat in the street at that hour, could not
possibly have gone all the way to Walthamstow, either by bus or even part
of the way in a taxi, and back again to Piccadilly Circus all in the space of
forty-five minutes. And Leighton, mind you, stepped out of a bus when his
friend met him, and I can tell you that the police worked their hardest to
find a taxi-man who may have picked up a fare that night in the
neighbourhood of Clerkenwell and driven out to Walthamstow and then
back to Holborn. That search proved entirely fruitless. On the other hand,
Leighton had paid his bus fare from Holborn, and the conductor vaguely
recollected that he had got in at the corner of Clerkenwell Road. Well, that
being proved, the man couldn't have done in the time all that the
prosecution declared that he did.

"After he was discharged, the Press started violently abusing the police
for not having directed their attention to the second visitor who called at
Fulton Gardens ten minutes or so after the first one had left. But this person
appeared as elusive and intangible as the mysterious wearer of Mr. Jessup's
hat and coat. The point policeman saw him in the distance, and Ann Weber
admitted him into the house and chatted with him for over twenty minutes.
She didn't know him, but she declared that she could easily recognise him if
she saw him again. For some time after that the poor girl was constantly
called upon by the police to see, and if possible identify, the mysterious
visitor. Half the shady characters in London passed, I believe, before her
eyes during the next three months. But this search proved as fruitless as the
other. The murder of Mr. Seton Jessup has remained as complete and as
baffling a mystery as any in the annals of crime. Many there are—you
amongst the number—who firmly believe that Arthur Leighton had, at any
rate, something to do with it. I know that the family of the deceased were
convinced that he did. Mr. Aubrey Jessup, the eldest son of the deceased,
who was one of the executors under his father's will, and who had gone
through the accounts of the business, had noted certain irregularities in
Leighton's books; he also declared that various sums which had come in on
the sixteenth after banking hours were missing from the safe. Moreover,
young Leighton himself had admitted that 'the guv'nor was waxy with him
because a few pounds were missing from the till.' All these facts no doubt
had influenced the police when they applied for a warrant for his arrest, but
there was no getting away from the evidence of that hat and coat found ten
miles and more away from the scene of the crime, and of the bus conductor
who could swear that out of forty-five minutes which the accused had to
account for he had spent twenty in a bus."

"It is all very mysterious," I put in, because my eccentric friend had been
silent for quite a long time, while his attention was entirely taken up by the
fashioning of a whole series of intricate knots. "I am afraid that I was one of
those who blamed the police for not directing their investigations sooner in
the direction of the second visitor. He seems to me much more mysterious
than the first. We know who the first one was——"
 "Do we?" he retorted with a chuckle. "Or rather, do you?"

"Well, of course, it was Arthur Leighton," I rejoined impatiently. "Mrs.

Tufnell saw him——"

"She didn't," he broke in quickly. "The house was pitch-dark; she heard
voices and she asked Ann whether she was speaking to Mr. Leighton."

"And Ann said yes!" I riposted.

"She said yes," he admitted with an irritating smile.

"And Leighton himself in his evidence——"

"Leighton in his evidence," the funny creature broke in excitedly,

"admitted that he had called at the house, he admitted that he remembered
vaguely that Ann Weber told him that Mr. Jessup had decided not to see
him, and that to celebrate the occasion he got the girl to make him a whisky
toddy. But, apart from these facts, he only had the haziest notions as to the
time when he came and when he left or how long he stayed. Nor were his
precious friends at the Café Royal any clearer on that point. They had all of
them been drinking, and only had the haziest notion of time until twenty
minutes to ten, when they got hungry and wanted their supper."

"But what does that prove?" I argued with an impatient frown.

"It proves that my contention is correct; that the first visitor was not
Leighton, that it was some one for whom Ann Weber cared more than she
did for Leighton, as she lied for his sake when she told her aunt that she was
speaking to Leighton in the hall. The whole thing occurred just as the police
supposed. The first visitor called, and while Ann Weber was down in the
kitchen getting him something to eat and drink, he entered the office,
probably not with any evil intention, and saw his employer sitting at his
desk with the safe containing a quantity of loose cash invitingly open. Let
us be charitable and assume that he yielded to sudden temptation. Mr.
Jessup's coat, hat, and stick were lying there on a chair. The stick was one
of those heavily-weighted ones which men like to carry nowadays. He
seizes the stick and strikes the old man on the head with it, then he collects
the money from the safe and thrusts it into his pockets. At that moment Ann
Weber comes up the stairs. I say that this man was her lover; she had
returned to him, as she did once before. Imagine her horror first, and then
her desire—her mad desire—to save him from the consequences of his
crime. It is her woman's wit which first suggests the idea of telephoning to
Fitzjohn's Avenue: she who thinks of plunging the house in darkness. And
now to get the criminal out of the house. It can be done in a moment, but
just then Mrs. Tufnell opens her door on the second floor and begins to
grope her way downstairs. It is impossible to think quickly enough how to
meet this situation. Instinct is the only guide, and instinct suggests
impersonating the deceased, to avoid the danger of Mrs. Tufnell peeping in
at the office door. The criminal hastily dons his victim's hat and coat, and he
is almost through the hall when Mrs. Tufnell calls to Ann: 'Is it Mr.
Leighton?' And Ann on the impulse of the moment replies: 'Yes, it is! He is
just going.' And so the criminal escapes unseen. But there is still the danger
of Mrs. Tufnell peeping in at the office door, so Ann invents the story of
having seen Mr. Jessup walk out of the house some time before. So for the
moment danger is averted; the housekeeper does peep in at the door, but
only in order to satisfy herself that the lights are out; and the women then
go upstairs together.

"Ten minutes later there is another ring at the bell. This time it is Arthur
Leighton, and Ann Weber has sufficient presence of mind not to let him see
that there is anything wrong in the house. She asks him in, she tells him Mr.
Jessup cannot see him, she gets him a drink, and sends him off again. I don't
suppose for a moment that at this stage she has any intention of using him
as a shield for her present sweetheart; but undoubtedly the thought had by
now crept into her mind to utilise Leighton's admitted presence in the house
for the purpose of confusing the issues. Nor do I think that she had any idea
that night that Mr. Jessup was dead. She probably thought that he had only
been stunned by a blow from the stick; hence her exclamation when she
realised the truth: 'My God, he has killed him!' Then only did she
concentrate all her energies and all her wits to saving her sweetheart—even
at the cost of another man. Women are like that sometimes," the Old Man in
the Corner went on with a chuckle, "the instinct of the primitive woman is
first of all to save her man, never mind at whose expense. The cave-man's
instinct is to protect his woman with his fists—but she, conscious of
physical weakness, sets her wits to work, and if her man is in serious danger
she will lie and she will cheat—ay, and perjure herself if need be. And those
flirtatious minxes, of which Annie-bird is a striking example, are only cave-
women with a veneer of civilisation over them.

"She did save her man by dragging a red herring across his trail, and she
left Fate to deal with Leighton. Once embarked on a system of lies she had
to stick to it or her man was doomed. Fortunately she could rely on the
other woman. A mother's wits are even sharper than those of a sweetheart."

"A mother?" I ejaculated. "Then you think that it was——?"

"Mark Tufnell, of course," he broke in, dryly. "Didn't you guess? As he

could not go with his beloved to the cinema he thought he would spend a
happy evening with her. What made him originally go into the office we
shall never know. Some trifle no doubt, some message for his employer—it
is those sorts of trifles that so often govern the destinies of men. Personally
I think that he was very much in the same boat as young Leighton: some
trifling irregularities in his accounts. The deceased, speaking so harshly to
Mrs. Tufnell that night, first directed my attention to young Tufnell. He
didn't want to see any of them that night: he was irritated with Mark quite as
much as with Leighton, but out of consideration for the housekeeper whom
he valued he said little about her son. Perhaps he had ordered the young
man to come to his office; as I said just now, this little point I cannot vouch
for. But if I have not succeeded in convincing you that the first visitor at
No. 13, Fulton Gardens was Mark Tufnell, that it was he who went out in
Mr. Jessup's hat and overcoat, changed hats in the street, and wandered out
as far as Walthamstow in order to be rid of the pièces de conviction, then
you are less intelligent than I have taken you to be. Mark Tufnell,
remember, lives in the north of London; he was supposed to have gone to
the cinema that night, therefore the people with whom he lodged thought
nothing of his coming home late."

"That poor mother!" I ejaculated, "I wonder if she suspects the truth."

"She knows it," the funny creature said, "you may be sure of that. There
was a bond of understanding between those two women, and they never
once contradicted each other in their evidence. A worthless young
blackguard has been saved from the gallows; my sympathy is not with him,
but with the women who put up such a brave fight for his sake."

"Do you know what happened to them all subsequently?" I asked.

"Not exactly. But I do know that Mr. Seton Jessup in his will left his
housekeeper an annuity of £50. I also know that young Tufnell has gone out
to Australia, and that if you ever dine with a friend at the Alcyon Club you
will notice an exceptionally pretty waitress who will make eyes at all the
men. Her name is Ann Weber!"

XIII

A MOORLAND TRAGEDY

§1

The Old Man in the Corner had finished his glass of milk and ceased to
munch his bun; from the capacious pocket of his huge tweed coat he
extracted a piece of string, and for a while sat contemplating it, with his
head on one side, so like one of those bald-headed storks at the Zoo.

"I always had a great predilection for that mystery," he said à propos of
nothing at all. "It still fascinates me."

"What mystery?" I asked; but as usual he took no notice of my question.

"It was more romantic than the common crimes of to-day; in fact, I don't
know if you will agree with me, but to me it has quite an eighteenth-century
atmosphere about it."
 "If you were to tell me to what particular crime you refer," I said coldly,
"I might tell you whether I agree with you or not."

He looked at me as if he thought me an idiot, then he rejoined dryly:

"You don't mean to say that you have never thought of the Moorland
Tragedy!"

"Yes," I said, "often!"

"And don't you think that the story is as romantic as any you have read
in fiction recently?"

"Yes, I do think that the story is romantic, but only because of its mise en
scène. The same thing might have occurred in a London slum, and then it
would have been merely sordid. Of course, it is all very mysterious, and I,
for one, have often wondered what has become of that Italian—I forget his
name."

"Antonio Vissio. A queer creature, wasn't he? And we can well imagine
with what suspicion he was regarded by the yokels in the neighbouring
villages. Yorkshire yokels! Just think of them in connection with an exotic
creature like Vissio. He had a curious history, too. His people owned a little
farm somewhere in the mountains near Santa Catarina in Liguria, and
during the war an English intelligence officer—Captain Arnott—lodged
with them for a time. They were, it seems, extraordinarily kind to him. The
family consisted of a widow, two daughters, and the son, Antonio. As he
was the only son of a widow, he was, of course, exempt from military
service, and helped his mother to look after the farm. His passion, however
—and one, by the way, which is very common to Italian peasants—was
shooting. There is very little game in that part of Italy, and it means long
tramps before you can get as much as a rabbit or a partridge; but there was
nothing that Antonio loved more than those tramps with a gun and a dog,
and when Captain Arnott had leisure, the two of them would go off together
at daybreak and never return till late at night.

"Some time in 1917 Captain Arnott was transferred to another front. He

got his majority the following year, and after the war he retired with the
rank of Lieut.-Colonel. He hadn't seen the Vissio family for some time, but
he always retained the happiest recollections of their kindness to him, and
of Antonio's pleasant companionship. It was not to be wondered at,
therefore, that when, in 1919, that terrible explosion occurred at the fort of
Santa Catarina, which was only distant a quarter of a mile from the Vissios'
farm, Colonel Arnott should at once think of his friends, and, as he
happened to be at Genoa on business at the time, he motored over to Santa
Catarina to see if he could ascertain anything of their fate. He found the
village a complete devastation, the isolated farms for miles around nothing
but masses of wreckage. I don't know how many people—men, women, and
children—had been killed, there were over two hundred injured, and those
who had escaped were herding together amongst the ruins of their homes. It
was only by dint of perseverance and the exercise of an iron will that
Captain Arnott succeeded at last in finding Antonio Vissio. There was
nothing left of the farm but dust and ashes. The mother and one of the girls
had been killed by the falling in of the roof, and the younger daughter was
being taken care of by some sisters in a neighbouring convent which had
escaped total destruction.

"Antonio was left in the world all alone, homeless, moneyless; Italy is
not like England, where at times of disaster money comes pouring at once
out of the pockets of the much-abused capitalists to help the unfortunate.
There was no money poured out to help poor Antonio and his kindred.

"Colonel Arnott was deeply moved at sight of the man's loneliness. He

worked hard to try and get him a job in England, right away from the scenes
of the disaster that must perpetually have awakened bitter memories.
Finally he succeeded. A friend of his, Lord Crookhaven, who owned
considerable property in the North Riding, agreed to take Vissio as assistant
to one of his gamekeepers, a fellow named William Topcoat. Of course this
was an ideal life for Antonio. He could indulge his passion for shooting to
his heart's content, and, incidentally, he would learn something of the
science of preserving, and of the game laws as they exist in all the sporting
countries.

"I don't suppose that Antonio ever realised quite how unpopular he was
from the first in his new surroundings. The Yorkshire yokels looked upon
him as a dago, and the fact that he had not fought in the war did not help
matters. During the first six months he did not speak a word of English, and
even after he had begun to pick up a sentence or two, he always remained
unsociable. To begin with, he didn't drink: he hated beer and said so; he
didn't understand cricket, and was bored with football. He didn't bet, and he
was frightened of horses. All that he cared for was his gun; but he went
about his work not only conscientiously, but intelligently, took great interest
in the rearing of young birds, and was particularly successful with them.

"After he had been in England a year he fell madly in love with Winnie
Gooden. And that is how the tragedy began.

§2

"An Italian peasant's idea of love is altogether different to that of an

English yokel. The latter will begin by keeping company with his
sweetheart: he will walk out with her in the twilight, and sit beside her on
the stile, chewing the end of a straw and timidly holding her hand. Kisses
are exchanged, and sighs, and usually no end of jokes and chaff. On the
whole the English yokel is a cheerful lover. Not so the Italian. With him
love is the serious drama of life; he is always prepared for it to turn to
tragedy. His love is overwhelming, tempestuous. With one arm he fondles
his sweetheart, but the other hand is behind his back, grasping a knife.

"So it was with Antonio Vissio. Winnie Gooden was the daughter of one
of the gardeners at Markthwaite Hall, Lord Crookhaven's residence. She
was remarkably pretty, and I suppose that she was attracted by the silent,
rather sullen Italian, who, by the way, was extraordinarily good-looking.
Dark eyes, a soft creamy skin, quantities of wavy hair; every one admitted
that the two of them made a splendid pair when they walked out together on
Sunday afternoons. Thanks to the kindness of Colonel Arnott, Vissio had
succeeded in selling the bit of land on which his farm had stood, so he had a
good bit of money, too, and though James Gooden, the father, was said to
be averse to the idea of his daughter marrying a foreigner, it was thought
that Winnie would talk her father over easily enough, if she really meant to
have Antonio; but people didn't think that she was seriously in love with
him.

"During the spring of 1922 Mr. Gerald Moville came home from
Argentina, where he was said to be engaged in cattle-rearing. He was the
youngest son of Sir Timothy Moville, whose property adjoined that of Lord
Crookhaven. His arrival caused quite a flutter in feminine hearts for miles
around, for smart young men are scarce in those parts, and Gerald Moville
was both good-looking and smart, a splendid dancer, a fine tennis and
bridge player, and in fact, was possessed of the very qualities which young
ladies of all classes admire, and which were so sadly lacking in the other
young men of the neighbourhood. The fact that he had always been very
wild, and that it was only through joining the Air Force at the beginning of
the war that he escaped prosecution for some shady transaction in
connection with a bridge club in London, did not seriously stand against
him, at any rate with the ladies; the men, perhaps, cold-shouldered him at
first, and he was not made an honorary member of the County Club at
Richmond, but he was welcome at all the tea and garden parties, the dances,
and the tennis matches throughout the North Riding, and in social matters it
is, after all, the ladies who rule the roost.

"The Movilles, moreover, were big people in the neighbourhood, whom

nobody would have cared to offend. The eldest son was colonel
commanding a smart regiment—I forget which; one daughter had married
an eminent K.C., and the other was the wife of a bishop; so for the sake of
the family, if for no other reason, Gerald Moville was accepted socially and
his peccadilloes, of which it seems there were more than the one in
connection with the bridge club, were conveniently forgotten. Besides
which it was declared that he was now a reformed character. He had joined
the Air Force quite early in the war, been a prisoner of the Germans until
1919, when he went out to Argentina, where he had made good, and where,
it was said, he was making a huge fortune. This rumour also helped, no
doubt, to make Gerald Moville popular, even though he himself had
laughingly sworn on more than one occasion that he was not a marrying
man: he was in love with too many girls ever to settle down with one. He
certainly was a terrible flirt, and gave all the pretty girls of the
neighbourhood a very good time; he had hired a smart little two-seater at